​By: Panicha Sillapawatayanon, M.A.

Play is an important part of childhood. Play helps children develop cognitively, physically, socially, and emotionally. Children who play have healthy brain development. It’s through play that children learn to explore the world around them and start mastering challenges. And above all else, play is enjoyable!

Undirected play, or free play, gives children opportunities to learn new skills while moving at their own pace. Free play allows children to use their creativity, develop their imagination, and encourages them to learn how to share with their peers and resolve their conflicts. Additionally, free play helps keep them active through physical activity! However, parent involvement is always encouraged! Parents who play with their children build relationships with them that are loving and engaging. Even when parents simply watch their children play they are able to take a peek into their children’s world. Parent supervision is needed when children are playing outside too. It’s important to note that true free play isn’t passive play such as video games, watching tv, or playing on the iPad.

Some examples of free play include:

Playing on the playground such as running around, climbing, swinging

Physical activity such as sports or playing tag

Creative arts (drawing, coloring, painting)

Pretend play such as dressing up, role playing, building forts

Currently, school children are given less free time for play, creative arts, and physical activities as schools try to put efforts on academic preparation. Many marketed messages in the media target parents claiming that good parents have to enroll their children in every opportunity so they can excel and prepare for the future. As a result, many parents spend their time transporting their children to multiple organized activities such as specialized gyms, after-school enrichment programs, and extra-curricular classes. These organized activities do have many benefits for children; however, when children become “overscheduled” and start to live a “hurried lifestyle”, it can cause anxiety or increased stress.

Overscheduled children have less high-quality family time and are unable to receive the benefits of free play that would help protect them against the effects of stress. Ultimately, every family is different so parents can decide on the appropriate amount of scheduled activities that suit their family. But in my experience, many parents feel as though they can’t slow down or their children will fall behind. Some also worry that they won’t be good parents if they don’t match up to what the other parents are doing. Consider finding a good balance for your family between living (playing) in the moment and preparing for their future. Every child has different needs, so it’s likely that your family’s balance will look different from others. ​What if my children are bored? It seems that in our culture, we’re used to moving at a quick pace. We’re always looking for “what to do next?”. Children need to grow comfortable with silence and become bored sometimes. Feeling bored is a great opportunity for them to develop creativity! Avoid filling their free time with screen entertainment, and you’ll see how imaginative and creative they can become. It’s okay to say no to your children instead of feeling you have to go the extra mile or they will suffer or be deprived. Children will have plenty of time to be stressed and overscheduled as adults!

If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about yourself, your child, or teen attending therapy, please reach out to them by phone at 858-342-1304.

As always, thanks for reading and comments are always welcome regarding any issues around child or teen psychotherapy services in San Diego by Thrive Therapy Studio.

To stay in the loop on the services offered and to receive updated information about Thrive, please feel free to sign up for the newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/cvGx5n.

By: Dr. Erica Wollerman

At Thrive Therapy Studio, we work with children and teens of all ages and often their parents are very concerned about one behavior in particular, lying. This is one topic that seems to come up over and over again regardless of the reason why we are seeing a child/teen in therapy. Parents ask all kinds of questions… Why does my child lie? How can I make them stop lying and tell the truth? I’m so frustrated, what do I do? What’s wrong with them? Are they a pathological liar?

Interestingly, lying in small doses is actually not a behavior that concerns me as a therapist. It shows a child or teen’s resourcefulness as well as their growing autonomy from their parents, which are all developmentally normal and generally considered good things. When we see a lot of lying, however, it is concerning to us as well as parents.

When parents talk to us about lying, it is often a conversation about what is wrong with their child or teen… Not so much about what they could be doing differently. Interestingly though, I am often going to focus more on the parent's behavior than the child or teen initially. First, I want to explore with the parent how their behavior may contribute to their child/teen’s lying behavior. Often, children and teens talk to me about being afraid to tell their parents the truth about things, even small mistakes that they make, because they have learned that their parents get really angry, yell, punish them, and generally “can’t handle the truth.”

Unfortunately, while understandable, these parent responses make children and teens feel unsafe around their parents and make them feel that they can’t really tell them things, particularly not hard things or mistakes they have made. For children sensitive to failure and who already struggle to admit their mistakes, this compounds the challenge of truth telling exponentially.

This brings me to the main way parents can prevent and reduce lying. Parents can prevent and reduce lying by responding to their child calmly and with an interest in finding solutions, rather than immediately jumping to blame, shame, and consequences for the child. For example, if you find out that your child did not do well on a math test, you felt they were well prepared for, rather than being angry and asking them “what they did wrong or how could this happen,” you can say something like, “I am so sorry to hear that test did not go the way you were hoping. It must have been hard to talk to me about it but I am so glad you did. What do you think might be helpful in the future or do you think there is anything you can do to improve this grade now?” If you respond in this way, your child is much less likely to hide grades in the future and to talk to you about how things are going academically.

This does not mean that consequences should not be given. At times, consequences are perfectly appropriate, they just should not be given in a hasty way out of anger or shame, but perhaps in a conversation with your child or teen. You can even ask them what they think would be appropriate as a consequence for the mistake or situation that came up. For example, if your child accidentally broke something in your home, the conversation might go something like this… “Thank you so much for telling me what happened, I can tell that was difficult. I’m disappointed that the window is broken but I do know that mistakes happen to all of us. What do you think you could do to prevent accidents like this in the future? What do you think would be a fair consequence?” Hopefully your child/teen would come up with something along the lines of being more careful to prevent this accident from happening again and then you could arrange for a way for them to help pay for the broken window. This makes the most sense as it is a natural consequence that results from cause and effect, something is broken and we pay to fix it.

Here are the basic steps for responding to difficult moments with your child or teen using the above example:

Connect and respond with empathy – Thank you so much for telling me what happened, I can tell that was difficult for you

Express some degree of your feelings calmly

Validate that mistakes happen and are not the end of the world – #2 and #3 are combined in this example - "I’m disappointed that the window is broken but I do know that mistakes happen to all of us."

Come up with ways to work on this in the future - What do you think you could do to prevent accidents like this in the future?

Discuss consequences if calm and if appropriate for situation - What do you think would be a fair consequence?

Through these steps and a lot of patience, you can definitely help your child or teen respond to you in a different way and create a culture of honesty in your family!

As always, thanks for reading and comments are always welcome regarding any issues around child therapy or teen psychotherapy services in San Diego by Thrive Therapy Studio.

If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapy Therapist about yourself, your child, or teen attending therapy with one of us, please reach out to us by phone at 858-342-1304.

If you would like to receive updated information about Thrive Therapy, please feel free to sign up for our newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/cvGx5n.

By: Dr. Erica Wollerman

Making the decision to start therapy for your child or teen is usually a pretty difficult one for parents riddled with concerns about a variety of things… Does this mean something is “wrong” with my child? Will my child think something is wrong with them? Are they just going to complain about me? Will therapy even help them with the things I want it to help them with? And the list goes on, and on, and on!

As a child/teen therapist, I get these questions a lot and while I understand where the questions come from and the concerns parents have, I as a therapist am also, unsurprisingly, pretty pro-therapy. I believe that any and all of us can benefit from therapy and that going to therapy does not mean that anything is necessarily “wrong” with us or with our lives. Therapy can provide a safe space to explore ourselves, our lives, our reactions, and can provide us with a supportive person to walk with us through life’s challenges. I also think that children and teens respond particularly well to having an unbiased adult in their lives who can talk through situations and challenges in a way that parents, coaches, and teachers just can’t. So, I generally think that anytime is a good time to start therapy, but I thought a nice list of reasons to start might help parents make this decision!

Your child is experiencing symptoms that are starting to interfere with their life: This is very important – if your child is having symptoms of depression, anxiety, social skills issues, or behavioral issues that seem to be increasing and impacting your family more, that do not resolve within a week or so, an initial appointment with a therapist is definitely a good idea. Often, I find that parents struggle so much with the decision of bringing their child to therapy that they wait far longer than I would recommend. So, sooner is better than later in my eyes!

Your child or teen has experienced a significant loss or challenge. Therapy can be particularly helpful following a move, divorce, death of a significant person, or just a challenging time perhaps transitioning to a new school, grade, or family situation. Even if it is a short term experience just to make sure your child or teen is coping well, I would say all of these events are a great reason to bring your child or teen to therapy.

Your child or teen struggles to talk to you about challenges in their life. If you have a child who is either just not very verbal or who shuts down in response to difficult conversations with you, it’s a great idea to get them in therapy so that they can work on sharing and exploring their thoughts and feelings as well as learn how to have difficult conversations!

4.You believe your child does not fit in socially or is being bullied or bullying others. Kids who struggle socially or who are bullied or doing the bullying often will benefit from extra support. Considering that our social interactions are a huge part of our lives, it can be so tough for kids who feel that they do not fit in or who are being mistreated. Unfortunately, these issues place children and teens at greater risk of developing depression or anxiety in the future so it is important to support them before those issues develop.

5.Your child has a diagnosis or an IEP. If your child has a medical diagnosis or challenge going on, they will likely benefit from additional support. Additionally, if your child is diagnosed with a learning disorder, has an IEP for supports at school, or is diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder such as Autism, ADHD, Non-Verbal Learning Disorder, etc., providing them with the support of therapy can be so helpful. Children and teens who feel different for any reason greatly benefit from having outside supports where they can be themselves and work on developing coping skills to manage their challenges.

6.You have thought about how your child might benefit from therapy more than a couple of times. If you are spending a lot of time considering IF you should bring your child/teen to therapy, just go ahead and bring them in. Even if you are not sure why you are thinking it would be helpful, there is something that you are picking up on as a parent that I think you need to trust! Trust your gut and call for an intake… In my experience, sometimes parents do not know exactly what is “wrong” but get the sense that something is going on with their child/teen that they do not know about. In these situations, it is always better to be overly cautious than not provide support that could have been beneficial!

As I mentioned previously, as a therapist, I am definitely pro-therapy as you may have noticed through this blog! I will always recommend that it is better to call in and talk with a therapist about your family, child, or teen and see if they think therapy could be beneficial, rather than wait and let problems or challenges manifest into more problems or challenges. However, it is important to note that at my office, we are conservative in diagnosing children and teens (meaning we do not jump quickly to labeling and diagnosing unless those diagnoses are truly warranted) and that we will let you know if we feel your child or teen does not need services. So, just because you make the call as a parent, does not mean that you are signing your child or teen up for a lifetime of therapy!!

If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about yourself, your child, or teen attending therapy with one of us, please reach out to us by phone at 858-342-1304.

If you would like to receive updated information about Thrive Therapy, please feel free to sign up for our newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/cvGx5n.

By: Lindsey Brady, LMFT

As a Marriage and Family Therapist who specializes in children and teens, families often come to see me wanting help with specific behaviors that are happening in the home, at school, or in the community. Without the verbal understanding that adults have, children often resort to tantrums, crying, screaming, and yelling much to the frustration of most parents. It is important to remember that this behavior often serves a purpose for the child. It can communicate things that children are either unable to say or things they may not even be aware of on a conscious level. These are the five common needs that are communicated through behavior:

1. The need to connect - Listen, I get it! Life gets busy and responsibilities get in the way. Not to mention, dealing with negative behaviors doesn’t make it easy to slow down and connect, but this is a fundamental need that children have on a daily basis. Find at least 30 minutes each day to dedicate to your child. Family game nights, art activities, family outings, etc. all allow face-to-face time with each other to improve positive connections and positive relationships. Children are more willing to comply and behave in appropriate ways once they feel connected! And once they feel connected, they will be less likely to engage in negative behaviors.

2. The need for autonomy – This is a tough one for all parents. Children have a need to make their own decisions, which includes making their own mistakes. It’s hard to sit back and watch, knowing that your child may fail, but it’s vital that they be allowed to try. This develops courage, sense of self, and creates a supportive, loving relationship between parent and child.

3. The need to differentiate – Children are naturally curious and have a need to explore different opinions, beliefs, and values. Being free to be curious and create an identity without shame fosters loving, healthy relationships. This is a difficult need to balance, especially when teaching right and wrong is one of our duties as a parent. It is important to examine our own values and if there may be any motives behind wanting a child to be a certain way. This can allow parents to release expectations and allow children the space they need to grow into healthy, independent individuals.

4. The need for emotional comfort – Children have big emotions and equally big reactions. It is important to remember that young children are not able to regulate themselves and sometimes need extra support. Explain to children that ALL feelings are always okay and that they don’t need to hide them or suppress them. I like to teach children that feelings are like waves, if you don’t fight them - they pass. If you do fight them, they can pull you under. Extra hugs, love, and kindness help children to overcome and learn to self-soothe. If behavior is inappropriate, it’s okay to lovingly disengage until children calm down and then provide love and support and offer suggestions for how to handle feelings differently next time.

5. The need to feel respected and valued - When children are non-compliant and refusing to follow instructions, it is easy for parents to react with anger. The number one way that children learn from us is through modeling. If we model respectful and kind behavior, our children will respond and learn in the same manner. Remaining calm through challenges is not always easy, so don’t be afraid to take a break and address things later if you need to.

Next time your child is engaging in a behavior remember that they might be communicating a need and being aware of this is the first step towards helping your child to engage in more positive behaviors.

If you’d like to speak with someone regarding how to better understand and modify a child’s behavior, you can reach a Thrive Therapist at 858-342-1304.

If you would like to receive updated information about Thrive Therapy, please feel free to sign up for our newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/cvGx5n.

The final part in our discussion of motivation by Erica

Thank you so much for continuing to read our blog series on Teens and Motivation! This is the final segment to our series and if you missed Part 1 and Part 2, check them out here and here!

We can’t discuss how to motivate teens without looking a bit more at what motivation actually is. In our culture, we often think of motivation as something that is a static, ongoing state. People are often described as being motivated, or not. Motivation is often thought of as something quick and easy that you can just become all of a sudden. Unfortunately, motivation is much more complex than all of this would suggest and despite what Oprah and her “aha” moments might tell you, it can be a long process in getting someone ready for change. Additionally, motivation is variable and changes over time.

When anyone presents for therapy, particularly parents on behalf of their children or teens, they are wanting changes and they usually want them quickly. A big part of my job is to understand the client and evaluate their readiness for change. A key component of how I do this is through utilizing a psychological theory called The Transtheoretical Model of Change by Prochaska and DiClemente which is often just referred to as Stages of Change for simplicity. This is a model of change that was initially used to understand addiction but is a helpful framework when considering any person who is contemplating a change in their lives.

Here is a brief overview of the stages:

Pre-contemplation: This can be summed up as the time before a person realizes that they either need or want to make a change. “I don’t need to change.” Sometimes referred to as “denial.”

Contemplation: When a person is considering change. The hallmark of this stage is ambivalence, which means that the person is on the fence about change. Perhaps part of them feels change is needed and possible but another part argues against it. “Hmmm… Should I change?”

Preparation: Getting ready to change

Action: Actually making the changes

Maintenance: Living the changes

Parents need to know the following about stages of change:

Stages of Change and motivation are directly connected

A person has motivation even when they are in the contemplation stage and not making changes

Motivation essentially means: our desire to change + confidence in doing so > fears, challenges of change, etc. This is usually a product of leaving the contemplation stage and entering preparation.

They are not linear – people go back and forth between these stages all the time

Example: Think of times you have tried to go on a diet or implement an exercise routine

At Thrive, we specifically focus on stages of change and helping our clients build motivation through a specific way of talking about change called “Motivational Interviewing.” This style of communication is collaborative and goal oriented and elicits and explores a person’s own reasons to change. We create a feeling of acceptance and compassion for our clients, rather than judgment or criticism. Our goal is to elicit “change talk” from our clients, which is when the teen talks about changes they want to make, rather than when I “tell” them what they should change.

This style of communication is what my ingredients for motivation try to mimic for parents. In review, we want to connect with our teens, have faith in their ability to problem solve, allow them to make mistakes, give consequences where appropriate, and let them lead! These are the ingredients that produce a collaborative environment and discussion similar to what we create in our office that can help you support your teen towards making changes and feeling motivated!

If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about your child or teen attending therapy with one of us, please reach out to us either via email at ewollerman.psyd@gmail.com or phone at 858-342-1304.

For more information about the upcoming Parenting with Intention Workshop at Thrive, please contact Angela Bianco, ASW directly at 858-952-8835 or by email at angelabianco.asw@gmail.com. Angela is supervised by Erica Wollerman, PsyD (PSY25614) and questions regarding teen therapy can also be directed to Erica and the general Thrive team at 858-342-1304!

If you would like to receive updated information about Thrive Therapy, please feel free to sign up for our newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/cvGx5n.

As always, thanks for reading and comments are always welcome regarding any issues around child, teen counseling and adult psychotherapy services in San Diego by Thrive Therapy Studio.